Living in exile.
Bitter juxtaposition,
almost oxymoronic.
One entirety
cancelled
and substituted
by another entirety:
unprecedented existential operation.
My children
speak different languages
and I do, too,
between sleep and waking,
I hear different tongues
inside my head.
Grieving irritated
by the scent
of freshly ground coffee,
tangerines,
cinnamon,
newly-ironed clothes,
new-mown grass
blowing in springtime
through the open window.
Exile,
spilled wine
on a silver dish
while the cups
are empty.
Exile,
unbarred cages
protected by the insurmountable
distance
of our anguish.
Exile,
moth launched on the sea
by the sirocco
with the sand
of the desert.
There would be another self
awaiting me
in the land I left.
Useless wait,
misunderstanding.
If we met today
we couldn’t recognize
one another.
one another.
One life is Carrara marble,
the other is sand.
One man turns to stone
while the other crumbles.
Exile,
visions of women
stunning
soiled
by news of women
dying.
Exile,
dreary dance
without music,
bodies writhing
through spasms and memories
marking time to a rhythm
vital, but mistaken.
Adagio with no Allegro.
Requiem for the living.
I live my exile
like a funeral kermis,
awkwardly preparing
for the arcane,
classical tragedy:
to die in exile.
To exhale my last breath
distant,
absent forever
from the grace of home.
Julio Monteiro Martins was born in 1955 in Niterói in Brazil. "Honorary Fellow in Writing" at the University of Iowa in the United States, he has taught creative writing at Goddard College in Vermont (1979-82), at the Oficina Literária Afrânio Coutinho, Rio de Janeiro (1982-91), at the Instituto Camões, Lisbona (1994) and at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (1995). Between 1996 and 2000 he held courses in cities around Tuscany. He was among the founders of the Brazilian Partito Verde and of the environmentalist movement "Os Verdes". As a defender of human rights in Rio de Janeiro, he guaranteed the safety of the meninos de rua. In his country of origin he has published nine books, including short story collections, novels and essays, among which are Torpalium (Ática, São Paulo 1977), Sabe quem dançou? (Codecri, Rio 1978), A oeste de nada (Civilização Brasileira, Rio 1981) and O espaço imaginário (Anima, Rio 1987). In Italy he has published Il percorso dell'idea (petits poèmes en prose, with original photos by Enzo Cei, Vivaldi & Baldecchi, Pontedera 1998), as well as the short stories collections Racconti italiani (Besa, Lecce 2000), La passione del vuoto (Besa, Lecce 2003), and madrelingua (Besa, Lecce 2005). His story L'irruzione was included in the anthology Non siamo in vendita - Voci contro il regime (edited by Stefania Scateni and Beppe Sebaste, with a forward by Furio Colombo, Arcana Libri / L'Unità, Roma 2002). His poems have appeared in various literary journals, among which the international three-monthly "Pagine" and the online magazine "El Ghibli", as well as in the anthologies I confini del verso. Poesia della migrazione in italiano (Florence, Le Lettere 2006) and A New Map: the Poetry of Migrant Writers in Italy (Los Angeles, Green Integer 2006). He is the creator of the event "Scrivere Oltre le Mura". He now lives in Tuscany where, besides teaching Portuguese and literary translation at the University of Pisa, he directs and teaches at the Fiction Workshop for the Masters program of the Scuola Sagarana in Lucca, and he is editor-in-chief of the online literary magazine, "Sagarana" .